The last week has seen a torrent of invasions on the rights of Americans, all handed down by SCOTUS. Tsykoduk made a wonderful comment to that end on Justus For All” “It’s been a bad week for freedoms.”
And boy is he right. Here’s a brief round-up.
The rights of homeowners have just become moot. Rather than being able to be safe and secure in our homes, our local governments now have the right to take our homes and give them to private corporations.
The Sony betamax ruling which held that devices that had the potential to be used for piracy could be legally manufactured, providing there were legitimate uses for the device, has been overturned by SCOTUS.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, your VCRs, and DVDRs have just become illegal, unless you can clearly prove an abundance of legitimate uses for your device and show that you had no idea that the device in question could be used for piracy. Hell, we may as well sue Al Gore for inventing the Information Super-Highway, because he had to have known that it could be used for piracy.
While we’re at it, let’s sue Apple, because the ipod supports the mp3 format and any Tom, Dick or Jane can put something into the mp3 format.
Best of all on this, is what Glenn Reynolds has to say over at Instapundit.
“Forget piracy. I think that Big Entertainment will try to use this to shut down anything that looks as if it might become an alternative distribution system.”
Mr. Reynolds and I agree on this one. That is precisely what I think the RIAA is trying to do with their heavy-handed scare tactics and ridiculous legislation in favor of their “rights”.
What scares me most right now, is that SCOTUS seems to be favoring the large corporations over the little guy, and the democrats, well they’re okay with that. So who exactly is protecting the interests of the people now?